Vinny Lingham’s Blog

Has anyone tested out SpeedPPC? It just launched now ( a few moments ago), and it looks quite pricey at nearly $500, but potentially it’s a very valuable product. A lot of what Clicks2Customers has been doing, is building (industrial strength) technology, that SpeedPPC seems to have recreated, in a focused package. Might be nice for newer/startup affiliates. I’ll test it out later this weekend, and give some feedback in the comments section here.

From their website:

SpeedPPC Package

The “SpeedPPC Campaign Builder” Software. This is the software that pulls the methodology together and gives the system synergy. This software works for both Google AdWords and MSN Adcenter.

The Landing Page Code. This contains the code that dynamically generates the landing pages to perfectly match each keyword. Includes example templates.

The Tracking Code. We will show you using very simple code how you can track across marketing channels, even through email autoresponder series that go on for years.

“Affiliate Datafeed Landing Page Generator” software for affiliate datafeed integration.This is some extremely powerful server side software that uses affiliate datafeed files to dynamically build as many landing pages as there are products. Think about this. Using SpeedPPC you can create a new ad group for every model name. Then send the prospect to a landing page for exactly the product they were searching for. Roll out hundreds or even thousands of ad groups that cover every model that an affiliate offers.

Special in-house best practices document for obtaining great Google AdWords quality score. We’ve learned many lessons on quality score. This document outlines the actual rules we follow in house. Many might surprise you!

Expansion lists including: US city names, US state names, Australian city names, Australian suburb names, UK town names, top 1000 movie names, top 1000 music artists, top 1000 actors, top 300 Xbox games, top 300 Xbox 360 games, top 300 PS2 games, top 300 PS3 games, cell phone model names, car model names, motorcycle model names, perfumes, cosmetics, digital camera model names, video camera model names, router model names, laptop model names, printer model names, occupations.You can use these expansion lists to expose lots of long tail traffic sources that you would never otherwise be able to easily tap into without SpeedPPC.

Update: Here is a video

Another Update: Jeremy Palmer has written a great review on Speed PPC that is definitely worth checking out, given that fact that I haven’t done one yet. Nice one, Jeremy!

*Disclaimer - I decided to insert affiliate links - feel free to buy through them - I make regular charitable donations!

I got one of those “viral” emails today, related to the ecoIron post on a Black Google Homepage a while back:

The new Google

For those worried with energy consumption and all its downsides… When your screen is white, being it an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts. So a man named Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved.

In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out.

I must hand it to the guy that put it together - it’s very clever, and he is using the Google Custom Search Engine, which means that as this viral campaign spreads, he drives more search volume to Google, and also makes money out of it! Smart, very smart!

From the Blackle About Page:

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.
How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: “Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time”.

There are a lot of great web sites about saving energy and being more environmentally friendly. They are full of great tips covering the little things that we can all do to make a difference today. Try Blackling “energy saving tips” or visit treehugger.com a great blog dedicated to environmental awareness.

Again - very smart, but just another Internet fad!

I’ll be appearing on the CNBC Africa Business AM breakfast show tomorrow morning at 6:15am until 6:45am - GMT+2 (yes, I have to be there at like 5:30am - those who know me, are wondering how that is possible!). I’m having it recorded, and will post a video here as soon as I can.

I’m at the Nomadic Marketing course at UCT, and Mike Stopforth’s from Cerebra is doing a talk on Web 2.0 - “Beyond the Hype”.

Mike starts off with a story about how Dell was “giving” away free laptops with their broken e-Commerce platform. This was a good example of how the news spread through the blogosphere and Internet, virally. Importantly, Mike notes, Dell was paralyzed by the huge upsurge in orders - (2500 in 9 hours!), and they didn’t know how to deal with the Public Relations nightmare that was brewing, due to corporate paralysis (the US office had to approve any statements, etc).

The new Web Trend Map was put up - to show how everything is interlinked.

Mike also put a quote up from The Cluetrain Manifesto:

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter, faster than most companies.”

Now - it’s video time, produced by a professor of anthropology:

This video strikes a chord with what we are tring to achieve with Synthasite, in making the web an easier place to publish - regardless of all the complicated underlying frameworks & constructs.

The DNA of Web 2.0

Social Networking
Decentralisation
Diversity
Tagging (folksonomies)
RSS/XML

Mike spent a bit of time discussing Del.icio.us and what makes it work.

Mike is winding down, whilst discussing blog, blogging and aggregators such as Technorati, Amatomu & Afrigator.

Anne Holland over at Marketing Sherpa has written a really thoughtful article on how to calculate a blog’s reach & influence. I have roughly 1,000 Feedburner subscribers, most of which probably read my posts & another few hundred/thousand unique daily site visitors (depending on volume of posts). This blog is admittedly not a mass market blog, so I doubt I’ll ever get to the numbers that TechCrunch get to, but at least I feel that my readership is influential and consists of a number of bloggers (as you can see from MyBlogLog).

Anne points out the following points to be used in order to measure influence/reach (edited - read full article here):

#1. Traffic (don’t trust it alone)

Media buyers usually ask, “How much traffic is there and how much is unique?” and leave it at that. Paul notes the problem with traffic stats for blogs is that so much may come from search engines and other sites linking to one particular posting.

#2. RSS feeds

Hundreds of thousands of sites — ranging from automated splogs to high-profile online media — use RSS feeds from good independent bloggers as part of their content. Paul noted that his own posting headlines often show up on places, such as O’Reilly media. That’s pretty impressive reach.

#3. Inbound hotlinks

As with other media, traffic volume can be far less important than traffic quality. In the blog world, quality usually equates with influence. A blog read by a tiny group of people can have gargantuan influence if they are the right people.

#4. Search position, part one

You can research a blog’s search position in two ways — first, does that blog appear for key terms related to your business or brand?

#5. Search position, part two

Separately, also review a bloggers’ general search ranking under keywords associated with his or her own “brand,” such as their personal name, their blog’s name, their tagline, etc.

#6. Voice

You want to allay your brand with the type of voice that you feel your audience (investors, press, customers, etc.) would respect.